Marvel Studios
Following the disappointing response to Captain America: Brave New World, comic book movie fans are once again having a collective State of the Union on the current status of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has felt largely rudderless in recent years.
While the quality of Marvel Studios’ movies seems to be dipping — Captain America: Brave New World is the worst-reviewed film they’ve ever released — their storytelling skill, which helped the franchise become Hollywood’s dominant force in the 2010s, seems to be slipping, too.
All the evidence you need that the Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t the same carefully orchestrated interconnected series of stories it once was can be found in its post-credit scenes, as the MCU has teased numerous potential plot threads in recent years that now seem unlikely to ever come to fruition.
-Mordo in Doctor Strange
The post-credit scene of 2016’s Doctor Strange teased a face-off between Strange and Baron Mordo in the sequel. While the pair did ultimately clash in 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it was a different version of Mordo from another universe, meaning that whatever story they had planned for *this* version is likely dead.
-Sharon Carter in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
In the post-credit scene of the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, it was revealed that Captain America’s former fling Sharon Carter was the villainous “Power Broker.” Carter was not mentioned in Brave New World and, as far as we know, hasn’t been cast in the upcoming film Thunderbolts, either, which seems like the only other place her story could’ve been continued.
-Captain Marvel, Bruce Banner and Wong investigating the Ten Rings in Shang-Chi
Shang-Chi was largely well received at the time of its release, however, the departure of director Destin Daniel Cretton to helm Spider-Man 4 and the retooling of the MCU to get rid of the Kang storyline likely puts whatever is going on in this scene out to pasture.
-The return of the Ten Rings in Shang-Chi
See above I.e. Shang Chi plus Disney+ promising to allegedly put out less, and therefore ideally better, TV shows.
-Harry Styles as Starfox in Eternals
Eternals has proven to be one of the biggest misfires in MCU history and a reports indicate the studio is not developing a sequel.
-Kit Harington as Dane Whitman (and Mahershala Ali as the voice of Blade) in Eternals
Everything we just said about Eternals applies here, in addition to the fact that Blade has been torn up and started from scratch a handful of times in recent years.
-Oscar Isaac as the Jake Lockley personality in Moon Knight
All things considered, one of the MCU’s biggest fumbles in recent years has to be that they got Oscar Isaac to play a character as cool as Moon Knight and it’s already a forgotten project.
-Charlize Theron as Clea in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Of all the post credit scenes on this list, this one has the best chance of being followed up on as Strange is likely going to be key to the events of Avengers: Secret Wars.
-Brett Goldstein as Hercules in Thor: Love and Thunder
While Thor 5 may still happen, it will likely abandon the franchise overly goofy tone of Love & Thunder and thus its post credit scene.
-The Council of Kangs in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Marvel has inflicted tons of self-forced errors in recent years, but what happened with Jonathan Majors — positioned to be the franchise’s next “big bad” as Kang the Conqueror — was out of their control. Nevertheless, having to abandon Kang and the multiverse story is at the root of much of the franchise’s storytelling issues right now.